


A Cautionary Tale

by Pearlheart04



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Bass figures his shit out...eventually, Drinking, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Master/Slave, Murder, POV Multiple, Power Dynamics, Redemption, Sexual Slavery, Slow Build, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3930001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlheart04/pseuds/Pearlheart04
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie remembered every single one of her father’s stories. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice lost in Wonderland, the Little Mermaid fascinated with the world above the sea - the cautionary tales of what happened to young girls who wandered too far from home. </p>
<p>Thirteen years ago, the world went black. The lights, every last one of them, went off and plunged the world into darkness and chaos. But the world couldn’t be all bad. There had to be more out there than the monsters of her father’s fairy tales. </p>
<p>She was wrong. God, she was so wrong. </p>
<p>This was her story  - but it sure as fuck wasn’t a fairy tale. And Sebastian Monroe, former tyrant of the east, was anything but her storybook prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> No copyright infringement intended. Revolution is the property NBC/ Warner Bros Inc and not mine. Certain lines of dialogue (italicized bits in Charlie's part) are taken from S1/Ep.1 "Pilot". 
> 
> Please note, I completely butcher the canonical timeline for my own purposes. 
> 
> The story starts 13 years after the blackout, instead of the 15 of the tv series. Charlie is 18, Danny is 15. As in canon, Miles leaves the Monroe Republic around 11 years post blackout, but I've moved the Randall Flynn/Patriot storyline forward. By the start of the story, Monroe has been out of power for a year. The Monroe Republic and the Georgian Federation have been completely decimated. The Patriots, Texas and California are vying for supremacy, while the war lords, mercenaries and gangs of the Plains and the Wastelands shift allegiances between the three. Slavery, human and sex trafficking are predominant features of the this alternative universe, but most of the other societial aspects remain true to the series. 
> 
> Please see the end notes for a full list of warnings.

CHARLIE

It’s strange the things you remember; the images, scents and feelings, the vague impressions you carry with you from childhood on.

Charlie remembered every single one of her father’s stories. She could recall with perfect clarity, his weathered hands patiently striking a wedge of steel against flint. The spark catching in the oncoming night, igniting the flames and spreading wisps of light through their small living room back in Sylvania, Wisconsin.

Charlie and her brother, Danny, warm and safe, huddled under their linty grey blanket. The firelight illuminating their father’s face as he crafted his stories. Legends of monsters and magic, swords and brave heroes, adventures and dangers to overcome – a small flickering light amidst a world that had long gone black.

Fables and fairy tales of young girls who ran away from home. Children who strayed from their parents and were never seen again. Little girls and boys who wandered too far, who flew too close to the sun: Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and her Big Bad Wolf, Alice lost in Wonderland, the young mermaid fascinated with the world above the sea. Cautionary tales to go along with all her father’s real world restraints for his curious, adventure seeking little girl.

 

She remembered their endless arguments. Her fathers voice, tense and worried:

_You’re supposed to watch out for your brother_

_Stay away from the main roads! You know the highway’s not safe!_

_What do you want to do? Head out into the wild blue and get your throat slit by a gang of thieves. Or lynched by the Militia?_

_There’s nothing left out there for you too see!_

 

And Charlie’s impassioned rebuttals; she was adamant in her desires and fierce in her belief that there was more to the world:

_Nothing is ever safe to you! Everything is off limits_

_I don’t need you to look out for me. I can handle myself!_

_Come on, Dad! If you had your way, we’d spend our whole lives on this damned street_

_It’s not all like that. There are other towns, right? Other people? More. I just…I wanna see for myself._

 

She’d been so convinced that he was wrong; too overprotective and gun-shy after her mother split.

She could see the world sprawling before her as one giant unknown. Filled with possibilities and adventures, something to be embraced, explored and conquered. Faded postcards of the cities of the old days: Los Angeles, the Chicago skyline – shining and electric at night, The Empire State building in New York, the San Francisco bay. Snapshots of a world she desperately wanted to see.

The whole world couldn’t be all bad. Everyone in it couldn’t be reduced to nothing more than dangers to be avoided and enemies to overcome. There had to be more out there than the monsters of her father’s fairy tales.

She was wrong. God, she was so wrong.

\----

Years later, Charlie would remember that day like it was one of the stories that her father used to read to her and her brother when they were kids. Once upon a time, just outside a small beautiful village called Sylvania Estates, two golden haired siblings, a young girl and boy, traveled to a forbidden highway against their father’s wishes…

The day dawned. The air warm, thick and cloying with the beginnings of summer and the sky a picturesque blue. She remembered that especially. How beautiful the day was, sun shining, the sky blue with puffs of white dispersed through out – the type of storybook view that made what happened all the more menacing.

She would always hold the images in her head: Danny, blond hair gleaming in the sunlight, grumbling but following behind her, like he always followed. The abandoned highway, a monument of cars, rusted metal piled high and twisted. Danny’s scream echoing through the tree line, the sound of her heavy breathing and heart beat as she ran toward it. The weight of her crossbow in her hand, a flash of blood, fear induced nausea, meaty fingers tight at her throat, a weight, a heavy, sweaty body holding her down. Danny’s labored breathing as two men pinned him down face first, the rope that’s tied around his wrists, the panicked, near desperate thrashing and the pain, sharp and solid against the side of her temple before her world faded to black.

\---

This was her story - but it sure as fuck wasn’t a fairy tale.

 

 

 

BASS

His name was Jimmy King now.

Sebastian Monroe died the day his republic went up in flames. Jimmy King, a friendless wanderer, a mercenary without title or rank, rose from the ashes.

He’s made peace with what he’s become: a paid sword hand, a weapon for whichever nation-state was paying the most, an outlaw from the Patriots, a war criminal in Texas, the Californian Commonwealth and most of the Great Plains, a small, anonymous piece of the war that’s burning a path across what’s left of the country.

Jimmy King was loyal to no one and nothing. He fought for no cause. He was responsible for no one. He’d put the burden of thousands of lives behind him, along with the memories of seared flesh, the dying screams of his people - soldiers and civilians alike - the smoke and flames engulfing his ruined city. He tried to stay out of the politics of it all now, to distance himself from the pull of power, from society’s chains and claims.

Jimmy King wasn’t a hero or a savior. He was a man who killed for the right price, collected his coin, downed his sorrows in drink and let the chips fall where they may.

\---

 

He doesn’t know why he did it.

He never meant to save and claim the girl. He certainly never meant to take in a slave girl, who was young, stubborn, reckless, and fifteen different shades of stupid.

But he did it anyway.

He was Jimmy King now, but sometimes he still had Sebastian Monroe’s hotheaded nature. Remnants of his bad habits. His sword hand and trigger finger were sometimes faster than his head. His lust greater than his logic. Especially on nights after blood shed, when the adrenaline of battle was still singing in his veins. Especially since Miles left; no longer there to temper his impulses and curb his bad behavior.

Even now, the image of that night is heavy in his mind:

The men were everywhere. A burgeoning mass of bodies – the tattered garbs of savage clansmen of the Plains, instead of the olive green and grey-blues of his militia- all shouting and talking, expressive, gesturing. 

Bass stood separated from the rest of the pack - brutal, violent hulking shapes, pressed shoulder to shoulder around the outer ring of a large circular cage; barbed wire and metal fencing, battle worn and rusted over with age, enclosed the sphere. He relished the burn of his whiskey as he surveyed the scene and wished (not for the first time that year) that he was back in the quiet solitude of his office in Independence Hall or amidst the chaos of a battlefield with Miles at his side. 

He tried to drown out the sounds of laughter and jostling, coins and hunks of gold, bottles of whiskey, bullets and weapons being tossed into the woven baskets that were circulating. The noise of the men gambling; yelling obscenities as they bet on the outcome of the impending bloodshed. 

The air was bitter with the musk and sweat of unwashed bodies; mingled with the metallic tang of blood and moonshine and anticipation. Primal intent hung around the group like an empty noose.

That’s the way it always was on nights of the cage matches. The adrenaline and bloodlust, almost palpable; the hum of fists hitting flesh, bones broken, the metal of broad swords clanging. 

He’d seen her through the crowd. A thin wisp of a girl – and that was what she was, she couldn’t have been much more than seventeen- beaten and barely clothed, chain nailed to the wooden post at the far edge of the cage and locked around her ankle. Collar, the mark of a slave, locked around her neck.

The girl stood there, across from a bulky, heavily scared man nearly twice her size. Her hands trembling, but her eyes defiant. A thick rivulet of blood ran down from her temple, across her cheek and her neck, which was blue and purple with finger marks. Her bottom lip was split and her eyes were wet, an almost impossible blue next to the bruise forming, ugly and stark, against her left cheek. But her back was ramrod straight, poised and ready for a fight. A fight she had no hope of winning. A fight she seemed to have no intention of backing down from.

She’s beautiful, yes. All long limbs and flowing, dark blond waves and too expressive blue eyes. But that’s not why he saved her.

He’d had his pick of beautiful woman, from the bars to the whorehouses, who had more grace and experience than an untouched country girl. It wasn’t the shape of her features so much as the expression they wore.

His gaze was transfixed on the girl as a smug smile overtook her face. As she taunted her attacker and goaded him on. The sight of the girl’s insolent half smirk, and fierce eyes were suddenly painted over another face, in another time. The scene shifted into the harsh ringing of unforgiving steel, and the forcible impact of bullets sprayed into the crumbling wall he was crouched behind. His gun in one hand, his swords at his hip, and Miles at his side. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Miles’ face was young and open, luminous throughout the onslaught; smiling that cocky, half smirk even as the soldiers fell beside them, as blood splattered and troops were closing in. Barely a stone’s throw away.

"Nervous, Bass?" Miles had called out over the heavy gunfire.

"Nah, you?"

"Course not. This is gonna be fun."

The false bravado; Miles’ shit-eating grin, that cocky “bring it the fuck on” look was somehow mirrored in this girl.

That’s when he decided.

He didn’t think about it. Didn’t give himself time to second-guess.

He moved forward with purpose, elbowing his way through the crowd. He entered the ring before than man could do much more than backhand her across her face.

By the end of the match, the man was dead - sliced through with his own blade. And Jimmy King, formerly Sebastian Monroe, the man who didn’t care if the remaining nation-states tore what little was left of the world apart; the man who was nothing and no one to anybody, suddenly found himself up a stubborn, annoying, and all too intriguing slave girl.


	2. Chapter 2

CHARLIE

 

Charlie can make out the highway through the thinning tree line. The grass slowly giving way to concrete, the air growing warm around her as the sun reaches toward the noon sky. She picks up her pace, excitement bubbling up within her – unbidden and strong.

 

“Check it out, Danny,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at her less than enthused younger brother.

 

Danny’s lagging behind. Still pissed at having to lie to Maggie and their father about their morning excursion.

 

It’s not lying, Charlie thinks. Not exactly.

 

The weight of the crossbow strung across her back and the worn hunting boots on her feet are testament to that. She has every intention of going hunting. _After_ they check out the old, abandoned interstate.

 

“Here’s a crazy thought,” her brother says, the sarcasm thick in his warm voice. “How ’bout, for once, we actually go hunting when we say we will?”

 

Charlie rolls her eyes. “No one asked you to come.”

 

“No. Of course not. You just woke me up at dawn. Told me you were going out. To cover for you with dad and Maggie - because dad’s not pissed off enough after the shit you pulled last month - and you just expected me to stay behind.”

 

“No. Of course not,” Charlie yells over her shoulder. “Can’t have you missing out on all the fun.”

 

Danny huffs out a small laugh. “Charlie seriously,” he says and he stops walking. “We’re we going? It’ll be sun down by the time we make it back and we haven’t caught anything.”

 

“You’ll see,” she singsongs as she hops over a fallen tree log and moves toward the multilane expressway.

 

She doesn’t have to turn around to know her brother is following behind her.

 

That’s what Danny does. They mirror each other in that way. Both attached at the hip; always looking out for the other. Charlie staying up on nights when Danny’s asthma is at its worse, listening to each labored breath, tense and alert should he need her, Danny covering for her with their dad and step-mom, Charlie running off into something and Danny following behind, never far from her reach – her shadow, their mom used to say before she fucked off to God knows where.

 

Danny was cautious and thoughtful, Charlie reckless and headstrong- fire and ice the two of them. But it worked. They spent most of their childhood, especially in the first couple of months after their mom left when their dad drew inward from grief, finding the balance they needed to look out for each other.

 

\------

 

The highway is a desolate monument of twisted metal, glass and steel. The crash site is gruesome. There’s a pileup; cars - blue, black, silver, red- trucks, smaller compacts and even a large motorhome are all twisted, collided and crushed into one another. Left where they stopped, nearly thirteen years ago, to oxidized and rust.

 

Charlie wonders how many more highways and roads there are like this one, spread out all across a world that no longer has a place for electricity and modern inventions. There’s a certain melancholy to it. A beauty found in the remnants of the old days. It’s a small glimpse into a different time, a different place. So different to the boring, bucolic life that she’s confined to in Sullivan Estates.

 

Danny shuffles closer behind her, taking in the view. He’s not fascinated like she is. He looks sad, almost weary.

 

“People died here,” he says. His voice barely more than a whisper. Quiet to match the metallic graveyard that’s before them.

 

Charlie glances back at her brother through the halo of sunlight the bathes his blonde head. He’s all long, solid limbs and the wiry muscle of his soon to be fifteen. She doesn’t know when it happened but at some point they reached the same height. Now he is taller than her by a few inches and still shooting up like a wildflower. It’s like she can see the man he would be, straining at the edges, lingering on the peripheral, hinting at the whole.

 

It’s in every decision he makes. Every levelheaded, rational argument he launches at Charlie to try to temper her more reckless impulses. In every fight between her and their father that he plays peacekeeper for. Hell, it was even in the way he carried himself: quiet, always thoughtful, always cautious, but capable and solid in a way the Charlie never seems to project. He’s all these things, but at heart he was gentle. Much too gentle.

 

“You can go hunting without me, you know?” Charlie says. If only to spare him from what they might find once she goes looking through the cars. “I’ll meet up with you in bit. By our spot.”

 

 They aren’t supposed to go hunting alone. Technically, they aren’t even supposed to be this far from the estates without an adult. But Charlie’s been eighteen for nearly two months. She’s more than capable of taking care of herself.

 

Danny runs a hand through his already disheveled hair, but doesn’t object as Charlie makes her way toward the RV. Bent and overturned on its side.  Charlie hoists herself up over the side of the motorhome to its rusted door. Straining against it as she tries to pop it open.

 

“Go ahead already!”

 

She catches sight of her brother’s dubious look and swashes down a kernel of unease.

 

There’s a pebble of resentment there as well. She loves Danny more that she loves anyone else on this entire burnt out planet. More than their absentee mother, more than their worrywart of a father, more than their Uncle Miles – more myth than man in Charlie’s adoring eyes. But so much of her life has revolved around looking out for her younger brother.

 

Even now looking at him, a stone throw away from manhood, all she can see is the quiet little boy who followed her everywhere when they were younger.

 

All she remembers is the clench of fear she felt the one time she popped out of the green underbrush behind their house while he was gathering firewood.

 

She was twelve and stupid and angry at their mother and the world; it was meant to be a joke, a distraction, good for a quick scream and laugh.

 

The result wasn’t funny.

 

It was the first and only time their father ever hit her. He really shouldn’t have bothered.

 

That image of Danny, lying there in the dirt, clutching his chest and wheezing, his face purpling with the lack of air – it’s something she’ll never forget.

 

It’s the image she sees when she wakes up in the middle of the night to lay by Danny’s bed and listen to his breathing.

 

It’s that feeling – the terror, the overwhelming helplessness and guilt, the willingness to bargain away her soul in that moment if he’ll just breathe – that settles low and heavy in her stomach like a tidal wave washing over her.

 

Danny is her little brother and her best friend, but he’s also her biggest burden. Looking out for him is her oldest and most important job.

 

_Listen to me Charlie. It’s important. Okay?_

_Hold onto you brother. Hold onto him and don’t let go. You understand me? No matter what happens. You hold his hand and you keep going. You make sure you have him. You promise?_

_I promise, Mommy._

“I’ll be right there,” Charlie tells Danny, still perched on the side of the RV. “I promise.”

 

And that’s it.

 

Those are the magic words in their house. Mathesons don’t make promises they can’t keep.

 

You say it, you follow through. Full stop.

 

“I’ll be fine, Danny. I just wanna look around a bit. Go hunt. This way we won’t go back empty handed. Besides you’re the better shot anyway,” she says with a wink as she drops down into the motorhome.

 

It’s a lie. They both know it. But Danny heads off into the forest anyway.

 

“No more than twenty minutes Charlie! Then we meet at our tree,” he calls out to her. His voice aiming for stern and falling just short.

 

“Yeah, got it,” Charlie mumbles, dusting herself off and taking a look around the old trailer.

 

It’s dusty and mildewed, the air stale.

 

She looks around at the microwave and fridge, at the small iPod port dangling from a socket, and feels a stilted sense of familiarity, a sharp pang of longing for a world lost and unattainable.

 

She remembers these things. She barely had five years in the light, but the memories are there, vague and fuzzy around the edges, but there.

 

The hum of the fridge, the ding of a microwave, the spinning wheels of a pink, child-sized car, the bright lights of TV, the color of cartoons, the clanking drop of an icemaker. Ice-cream. The memory hangs before her as she lingers in front of the fridge. A large tub, the silver spoon, her small hand and her parents watching rapt with attention as she brought it to her mouth in the dim candle light – the looks on their faces sad.

 

She remembers the IPod too.

 

It was a holiday she thinks. Her parents were home and it was summer, her Uncle Miles and his friend showed up. They cooked in the backyard, under circular hanging lights. Music played, fast and upbeat. Her uncle- his face open, his smile wide - tossed her up in the air and twirled around fast to the rhythm. Charlie’s mother stood in a white dress and her uncle’s friend looked on, their laughs mingling with her bright, high childlike one.

 

The feeling of soaring, flying in the air and strong arms, wrapping around her to keep her safe from the fall.

 

Charlie pulls out of the memory with a jolt.

 

The blast of a gunshot rings in the distance as she scrambles up through the door of the RV. She whips her head around to the direction of the sound. The direction that Danny just walked off into not too long ago. She hops down and starts running toward the woods with fast jerky strides.

 

_Don’t let it be Danny. Please, don’t let it be Danny._ She says the words like a prayer as a fear, fiery and viscous, clutches around her heart and squeezes.

 

“CHARLIE!!”

 

Her brother’s voice, high with panic and pain, rings out in the distance. It stabs into Charlie like a sharp punch to the gut before she’s off like a bullet, pulling her crossbow from her back as she goes.

 

Tree branches lash at her as she crashes through the forest. Hopping over logs and large rocks, her heavy breathing and heartbeat are loud in her ears. The terror strong in her gut.

 

“DANNY?!” she calls.

 

“DANNY!”

 

There are three men in the clearing up ahead - rough, massive and armed - holding Danny as he thrashes in their grip. They’re trying to secure his wrists and ankles with coarse rope. A deep cherry blood flows down his left leg, but he still fights.

 

Charlie’s never killed before.

 

She’s never really fought much besides the schoolboy bullies in their small commune. But she’s hunted plenty. The principle is the same.

 

At least that’s what she tells herself as she moves forward on automatic and lets her arrow fly. It catches the man struggling with Danny’s feet clean through his shin with a solid swoosh of air and a heavy thunk. He let’s loose a shout of pain, the sound more animal than human, as he drops Danny’s feet and clutches his own leg. Charlie’s fingers tremble, but she barely hesitates as she reloads. She’s got their attention now.

 

“That was a warning,” she says. Her knees shake but her voice is steady and low. A sharp contrast to the panic that clawing for control.  “Let him go.”

 

Her eyes dart to her brother’s quickly and then away as she feels a man’s gaze turn to her. She takes in the mottled scar across the side of his face and his yellowing teeth as his pale eyes slide up her form slowly and settle on her face with a jungle cat’s predatory regard. His heavily scarred hand rests casually on the dagger at his side as he saunters closer, blocking her path to Danny.

 

“Don’t move,” she chokes out.

 

“Aww, boys, looks like we only grab part of a set,” Scarface says in a thick, cloying voice, “and Goldilocks here looks like she wants to play.”

There’s a chuckle from the man shoving her brother’s face into the dirt ground, his knee pinning Danny’s writhing body down as a dirt-coated hand pressing into the side of his head.

 

“You are a pretty one,” says the man, “my favorite kind to play with.”

 

Charlie clutches her crossbow tighter. Her finger hovering over the trigger as she keeps her eyes locked on the man in front of her. There is a flash of movement and sliver and Charlie fires off two bolts in quick succession. The first one slices through the forearm of the man holding Danny, who releases her brother and curls into himself with the impact of the pain. The next arrow hits closer to home. Lodging itself into the side of Scarface’s throat. There’s a sickening crunch, gurgle, and an outpouring of red on dirt-coated skin. A sudden splatter on the forest ground. The man reaches up quickly, shock passing his features before he instinctively tries to pull the arrow out of his neck. Blood dribbles from his mouth. His body hits the floor with a thud, his eyes still open as blood pours from his neck. He jerks once before he dies.

 

_He’s dead._

_Oh God!_

_He’s dead and she killed him_.

 

Charlie chokes down bile.

 

_She can’t fall apart. Not right now._

 

Adrenaline still high, she moves toward Danny, who stares in shock for a moment, a big red gash at the side of his mouth before he rushes to undo his binds.

 

“Da- Danny, you okay?” Charlie falls to her knees to try to help him with the ropes.

 

“I- I’m fine. Shit, Charlie. You-- ”

 

There’s a sudden movement in her peripheral.

 

She’s tackled, full force by a solid weight. Charlie’s back slams into the hard packed dirt. All the air is knocked from her lungs as the heavy weight on top of her sinks its fist into her side and then her face in quick succession.

 

Pinned to the ground, Charlie thrashes against the mass of the man on top of her- smell of sweat, dirt and alcohol strong - his steel colored eyes enraged.

 

“You killed him! You stupid bitch! You killed him!” The deep voice rumbles, furious and beyond reason.

 

She can her hear Danny screaming “Let her go”, the sound of a scuffle, the thump of fist meeting flesh. She bites the closest part of the man she can find, hard and deep down through the surface; hard enough to draw blood and feels a sick satisfaction at the bastard’s scream of pain.

 

The feeling doesn’t last.

 

The man clenches, hard and fast, at Charlie’s throat. Savage enough to crush her windpipe. She thrashes against him violently, nails drawing down awkwardly to claw his hands off her. It’s no use. He’s not letting up. Charlie’s lungs scream for air, her vision blurring before her.

 

“Trevor, that’s enough! Trevor, ease up man! We need ‘em alive!”

 

Another man tugs Trevor’s fingers from around her throat and she takes in deep choking gulps of air. As though she’s just come up from holding her breath beneath the surface of a deep pool of water.

 

Something hard and solid knocks her across the side of her skull before she can resume her struggle.

 

Bright lights dance behind eyelids. The pain is sharp and sudden and brings tears to her eyes. She let’s out a ragged sob.

 

_Danny_

 

It’s her last sound.

 

Her last thought before the darkness takes her.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are the warnings in full: AU - dystopia/post-apocalyptic, graphic depictions of violence, rape/noncon, dubcon, torture, murder, abuse, war crimes, sexual slavery, sex trafficking, kidnapping, graphic language, power imbalance, post-war fallout, and slow, tumultuous burn. 
> 
> If I forgot to tag anything, please let me know. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Constructive criticism/ feedback is much appreciated!


End file.
